Album Review - Excursions by C418
Daniel Rosenfeld, otherwise known as C418, is not always a name that’s very recognizable to most people, but his work most certainly is, especially to young people. He’s easily most known for creating both editions of the Minecraft soundtrack, published in 2011 and 2013, respectively. While I love both of those albums immensely, their popularity means that pretty much all of his other work flies under the radar, and doesn’t get nearly as much attention. I think the biggest example of that happening is with his 2018 album, Excursions.
Excursions was something of a new direction for Rosenfeld. Whereas his past albums had been predominantly ambient or experimental, with relatively little in the way of other electronic music, Excursions was undeniably a house album. I’m not too into house, but I’ve seen a lot of people call it ‘progressive house’, so I’ll run with that. The album is to some extent a compilation of things he’s been doing over the years. Some of the songs had been unused demos for game concepts, some had been sitting on websites like SoundCloud, unreleased, for years, and yet another few songs were created exclusively because the entirety of the album (at the time) was leaked. There’s no overarching concept for the album, but there are personal meanings that Rosenfeld ties to certain songs. Now, enough pregame. Let’s get to the actual review of this 16 song, 100 minute album.
Excursions
Now, I did say that this was a house album, but I lied (sort of). There are a few tracks that are ambient, and sound more similar to his other music. This is one of those tracks. It’s nearly six minutes long, and sets up the feel for the album perfectly. Much like the rest of the album, it's very soothing, but this song in particular feels like a slight callback to his previous work on things like the Minecraft soundtrack, with its excellent atmospheres and floating structure with a lack of strictly defined sections.
Quick side note before I continue, I won’t be covering every single song to avoid repeating points excessively, just the ones that stood out to me the most.
Cold Summer
Cold Summer was one of the tracks I alluded to previously. It was the first song Rosenfeld put on his SoundCloud page. I’m not sure when, as his SoundCloud has mostly been wiped clean (but that’s a different ordeal), but the song was likely posted over a decade ago. The atmosphere to the song is really unique, and the only word I can think of that describes it is “jungle”. It has a lot of natural sounds like birds chirping (a theme that continues throughout the album), and when paired with the rest of the synth choices and percussion samples, just gives me that feeling. Excellent song, and a very strong second track.
Beton
In all his 15 years of releasing music, this song was Rosenfeld’s first ever single released to promote an album. Despite writing this song to keep himself distracted from a recent breakup, the song is one of the most upbeat and comforting on the album. Throughout this album, Rosenfeld stated that a big goal of his was to find as many different ways to reintroduce a musical idea without being boring, and this song delivers on that goal. The song is nearly 8 minutes long and primarily based around two fairly concise sections, but the song does an excellent job of drawing you in and hypnotizing you. By the time it’s done you don’t even notice that the time has gone by, or how many times certain sections were repeated with different variations.
Thunderbird
This song is very intimidating. Clocking in at over 13 minutes, this is easily the longest song on the album. It has a similar basis as Beton and many other songs; the structure is based around two main movements, with most of the variation coming from dynamic changes, synth choices, and tension/release. This song feels more dramatic than the other tracks, and there are even a couple moments where it feels almost ominous. It’s not something you’d expect from this album at all, but it works in the song’s favor very well. To top it all off, Rosenfeld includes a ton of natural sounds in the ambient sections of this song. In my opinion, this is easily one of the best written songs on the album, although there is no clear cut winner in that department.
Aviva
This isn’t necessarily a huge standout to me, but I want to talk about it. It’s only three minutes, and essentially repeats one piano progression for the entire time. It’s placed right in between Thunderbird and Figure 8, and does a very good job at cleansing the listeners palette in between those two long songs (Figure 8 is nearly nine minutes long). The melodic style and synth choices in this song make it seem like an extra track in his Minecraft: Volume Beta album, and I love it.
Fake Triplets
If I had to pick a single song to sum up the album, it would be this one. This song employs a lot of the same general concepts as many other songs on the album, but something about it sticks out to me over the others. It’s very ambient while employing many elements of house music, just not in a typical house fashion. The pacing and atmosphere are both excellent, and I think this song does the best job of balancing the different emotions and atmospheres on the record.
Hope
It’s not the biggest stand out, but I feel that I should talk about it since it's the album closer. This song is straightforward: it’s a short ambient track based off of one chord progression, which swells, and then eventually dies down into some unidentifiable natural noise that fades out. The mood is somewhat ambiguous, but it’s pretty, and overall I think this is a solid way to end the album. It doesn’t go out with a bang, but I think that it’s better to have more of a gentle landing after a 100 minute album.
Verdict + Final Thoughts
My final rating for this album is a 9.6 out of 10. It’s very well paced, and keeps a central concept while managing to branch out into different moods. From a sound design standpoint, it’s excellent; the textures and synths are all very well chosen and placed in the songs, and it seems Rosenfeld knows exactly when is best to throw a little bit of a curveball in terms of weird instrumentation, or natural sounds like birds chirping. In a perfect world, this album would have gotten much more attention than it did, as its numbers pale in comparison to his work with Minecraft, but thankfully this album still got plenty of attention. Rosenfeld has been pretty quiet ever since releasing this, but if that means he’s working on something similar, I’m completely here for it. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see y’all later!